Friday, May 23, 2014

A Theory on How Flightless Birds Spread Across the World: They Flew There

A
Theory on How Flightless Birds Spread Across the World: They Flew There

Caroline Dent

This article, written by Carl Zimmer of the New York
Times, is about questioning ideas and discoveries of the past.

The article is about an extinct animal called an Elephant
Bird. It was the heaviest bird species that have ever lived, weighing up to 600
pound and being almost 9 feet tall. It also, due to its monstrous size, had
wings but could not fly. These creatures are generally unknown to scientists,
but it can be assumed that they went extinct when earth became human-
dominated. A special interest was put into these birds, because they were such
an enigma to all people. Until more recently, the only information they could
find of these birds was from bones and fragments of their eggshells, and now
they have done a more extensive study on the DNA of these birds. From these
tests they discovered that the closest living relative of the elephant bird was
a 6- pound bird called the Kiwi bird that lives 7,000 miles away in New
Zealand, and it made people even more curious about the elephant bird and all
flightless birds, or ratites. They are spread out on different continents and
the cause was assumed to be because of the continental drift, that is, until
recently. Scientists, especially a scientist named Dr. Cooper, have gone
farther into looking into the DNA of ratites, especially the elephant bird and
another extinct bird called a Moa. When DNA was from the moa was found, it
became clear that the closest living relative of a Moa bird was a bird, called
a tinamou, and was a flying bird, as opposed to a ratite. This new information
made scientist wonder if it is possible that all flightless birds were once
able to fly and they lost the ability through evolution. With the new
technology scientists were able to learn that the elephant bird when extinct 50
million years ago, and the continent was already separated at that time. Then,
it became clear that there is no way to get from Madagascar, the home of the
Elephant Bird, to New Zealand without flying over an ocean, disproving the
theory of continental drift, for this particular case, and making people think
that elephant birds also evolved from birds that used to be able to fly.

This is relevant to today because of how new technology
is able to advance science. With new discoveries, theories that were thought to
be true are proven in correct and what people think of the world becomes more
accurate. It allows people to have a better understanding of what is happening
and it lets science become more and more correct as time goes on.

This article was very good because it gave a thorough
amount of background information and it explained everything very clearly. The
only issue I had with it was it was more about the information side of it
rather than the actual science side. Still, the article was very interesting.

Zimmer, Carl. "A Theory on
How Flightless Birds Spread Across the World: They Flew There."The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 May 2014. Web. 22 May
2014.